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Post by luther189 on Oct 14, 2013 7:20:23 GMT -6
What is going on in the old "Bootleggers" and east of it? it sure looks like a mess though..
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 14, 2013 9:01:35 GMT -6
Hey kyle, go to all the businesses downtown and tell them you are the one responsible for painting your building the colors you did. Then ask them for $5 so you can paint that wall. I'll bet you get more death threats than dollars. Let me know how that works out for you there! Like Edward Jones is going to give you $5 to drive down property values even more. Kyle, you haven't a clue! I just got back from Edward Jones. The owner won't be in until tomorrow, but I left my number for him. The woman there was very nice. When I explained to her that I painted my building, she said that she was just talking to a friend about how nice it looked. I pointed out the wall that this thread was started about, which can be seen from their office. She agreed that it would be nice if it were painted. I explained to her that I wanted to know if the owner would be willing to donate $5 to pitch in on a gallon of paint for it. No death threats yet, but we'll see what the owner has to say. I'll keep you posted, but I think maybe you should go to Ace and start looking at color swatches. They have many choices in their subtle neutral earth tone section. I bet that we can get the money raised and paint bought before Wednesday night's council meeting. If we can get in touch with the owners, I think it would be great to have them meet us at the meeting and present them with the gallon of paint in front of the council, don't you? I'll be available Wednesday afternoon to buy the paint, what time do you want to meet at Ace? You could just drop off the color swatch of your choice at my son's store if you want, I'll buy it and meet you at the council meeting, it starts at 7:00. Let me know.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 14, 2013 16:42:54 GMT -6
I'm really not having a hard time at all raising the money for the paint.
All I have to do is show a picture of the back side of the building to people and they realize that the owners of it are obviously poverty stricken people that just can not afford the paint.
They probably aren't as well off as our city that can afford $138,000 fountains and $375,000 band shells.
When we do find out who the owners are, I want to make sure that the know where our food pantry is; we don't want people going hungry here.
It is really a shame that my paint job is bring down the value of these poor people's property.
Maybe I should paint over it so that it will fit in with this one?
If this building were in LaSalle or Ottawa, the cities there would help the poor owners of it fix it up, by paying for half of the project with their facade improvement grant programs.
Instead, here we probably charged them $500 to inspect their building and make a list of things to be done, and fine them if they don't.
I bet the City is getting rich off the fines from this one.
We'll probably soon have a fountain and band shell in every park.
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Post by longarm on Oct 14, 2013 19:14:24 GMT -6
The city owns this building after the roof collapsed over the rest and the city tore the buildings down. I think I am right. That is how they acquired the land for the little park they built.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 14, 2013 19:39:28 GMT -6
I'm sure this building didn't always look this bad.
The way it looks now is obviously from years and years of sitting empty with no use and no attention.
With no use, there is no income and no motivation to maintain it.
If this building were in LaSalle, it could have gotten the benefit of a progressive marketing campaign to get people with businesses in other communities to come see what is available for relocating or adding a location.
Here in Streator if the owners had a reasonable use and went to the city for information, they could have just gotten an unjustified restriction, keeping it vacant for years longer.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 15, 2013 7:11:02 GMT -6
Here's the side of that same building: You can see the openings used by the military surplus homing pigeons to come and go, but what else uses those openings? If you live downtown, you know that it is kind of hard to sit outside and enjoy your evening with so many bats swarming around the area. I have made sure there are no openings in my building to keep them from using it as a breeding grounds. We get our animals vaccinated to keep them from spreading dangerous diseases that can kill people, but bats are known for carrying and spreading that disease. Maybe people have already been contracting rabies from these bats downtown. Saturday night I saw someone that I thought was vomiting because his body was rejecting the excessive amount of alcohol in his system. However, I could have been mistaken, maybe he was heaving to try to get the foam created by the disease out of his mouth. Actually there were a lot of people acting rabid.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 15, 2013 7:15:07 GMT -6
Thank you again Oldtimer for starting this thread, I am finding a lot of different subjects to talk about on here now.
When you are bragging to you friends down at City Hall, don't take all the credit for it though.
Although you are the main reason behind it, be sure you share some of the credit with ohhenry, hawk, and saynotokyle.
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Post by Anonymous on Oct 15, 2013 8:08:24 GMT -6
Thank you again Oldtimer for starting this thread, I am finding a lot of different subjects to talk about on here now. When you are bragging to you friends down at City Hall, don't take all the credit for it though. Although you are the main reason behind it, be sure you share some of the credit with ohhenry, hawk, and saynotokyle. Oldtimer started this thread? It looks like you started this thread.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 15, 2013 10:10:15 GMT -6
Thank you again Oldtimer for starting this thread, I am finding a lot of different subjects to talk about on here now. When you are bragging to you friends down at City Hall, don't take all the credit for it though. Although you are the main reason behind it, be sure you share some of the credit with ohhenry, hawk, and saynotokyle. Oldtimer started this thread? It looks like you started this thread. Read page 3, where Oldtimer drove Jude off this board with his rudeness and claiming that he started this thread. Good thing I quoted what he said, because he came back through and deleted his posts. This thread never would have been started if it weren't for him starting a new thread for no purpose other than to attack me and call me names. He likes picking apart other people's buildings to claim they are bringing down property values, have no business sense, and just don't have a clue. There isn't a double standard where it is OK for one person but not another is there?
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Post by cityslicker on Oct 15, 2013 10:35:19 GMT -6
Is the bright orange building on rt. 18 west, within the city limits?
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Post by Anonymous on Oct 15, 2013 11:09:14 GMT -6
Oldtimer started this thread? It looks like you started this thread. Read page 3, where Oldtimer drove Jude off this board with his rudeness and claiming that he started this thread. Good thing I quoted what he said, because he came back through and deleted his posts. This thread never would have been started if it weren't for him starting a new thread for no purpose other than to attack me and call me names. He likes picking apart other people's buildings to claim they are bringing down property values, have no business sense, and just don't have a clue. There isn't a double standard where it is OK for one person but not another is there? Actually Myself, it would be WONDERFUL if everyone on here acted like the adults they are supposed to be. I found the things that you and others said in response to Oldtimer to be much worse than anything he typed out. Listen, I realize this is a colossal waste of my time, but I always try to see the best in people and look at things from their point of view. I am finding it harder and harder to feel any sympathy for your plight downtown. I wish that you would be straight-forward in the way you approach things. Do I think you have a reason to be angry with your situation? Yes, I do. However, time after time after time, the citizens who DO converse with you in a mature fashion on this forum and try to help in some little way, are rewarded with trickery and deceit. If the people that we share this world with would only treat others the way they wish to be treated, imagine how much better place it would be. You are like a dog with a bone.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 15, 2013 19:07:28 GMT -6
Bad news. I can't find my pictures of what is behind the fence now. The good news though is that I can pretty much describe it, using a scenario. Imagine one of our good kids in town is walking through City Park minding his own business, when some of the thugs that like to hang out there try to mug him. Scared, the poor kid runs down Monroe, turns by the Tap, and thinking that there would be ground on the other side of that fence, jumps over it to hide. He finds himself falling through the big gaping hole landing in the basement of that vacant building. Severely injured from the long fall, the boy lays there and suffers as he tries to hold on to the last remaining strands of his innocent young life... Anyway, I think you get the idea. I sure am glad that I don't have to worry about anyone falling into a huge gaping hole in my building. Can you imagine the liability risk the owners of that building are taking on? I sure wouldn't want to be the one liable for having to pay out that settlement. With it being a public safety issue, it is too bad that our city doesn't have some type of power to start a condemnation process to force the owners to take care of this hazardous condition. It has been three days and about 1000 views since I posted this. I wonder if anyone has gotten in contact with the owner of the building so they can go see how many corpses their trap has snared. At least if anyone is missing a loved one they will know where they can go look. If the City really owned this building, that would mean that we all would have to end up paying the settlement if someone got hurt. I sure hope people are wrong and someone other than our city owns this building.
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 15, 2013 19:09:26 GMT -6
Council members consistently point out building that they think are in "deplorable" condition that they want taken care of. At last Tuesday's COW meeting a council member brought up a building that he said was wide open. He worried about it catching fire and said that he felt sorry for the neighbors for having to live around it. At this building, Obviously it would only take seconds to gain access through the huge basement hole. However, a second point of quick entry would be through these barely covered windows on the side, that are not up to our vacant building ordinance standards pushed on other vacant building owners. They are accessible by coming across the neighboring roofs from the low roof behind Ray's. It's not like our City hasn't known about both of these access points for a long time. After the Lipton Tea building burnt, the city came around specifically looking for access points on other buildings. They told me to keep my doors locked. I told them then about the two ways that someone could get in this building. I later also told a council member that I thought would be interested in public safety and asked that he try to do something about it. The council members are worried about other buildings and feel sorry for the people that live around them. Why aren't they worried about the people that not only live around this one, but also the businesses that try to survive around it?
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Post by mommytoo4 on Oct 15, 2013 19:19:42 GMT -6
Here's the side of that same building: You can see the openings used by the military surplus homing pigeons to come and go, but what else uses those openings? If you live downtown, you know that it is kind of hard to sit outside and enjoy your evening with so many bats swarming around the area. I have made sure there are no openings in my building to keep them from using it as a breeding grounds. We get our animals vaccinated to keep them from spreading dangerous diseases that can kill people, but bats are known for carrying and spreading that disease. Maybe people have already been contracting rabies from these bats downtown. Saturday night I saw someone that I thought was vomiting because his body was rejecting the excessive amount of alcohol in his system. However, I could have been mistaken, maybe he was heaving to try to get the foam created by the disease out of his mouth. Actually there were a lot of people acting rabid. See just when I agree with what you are saying about the drunks downtown you get all passive agressive and ignorant, take your emotions out of the agenda and maybe you will be ok!
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Post by Kyle Mitchell on Oct 15, 2013 19:24:56 GMT -6
The passive aggressive attitude is actually a shout out to another of my detractors on here. It is the SO way. Right greek?
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